An Uber driver in Sydney talks about his experiences on the road, often with unintelligible rambling.

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Smoking [in an Uber] is bad for your [rating] health

I feel as though this shouldn’t be a controversial opinion to post. I feel as though this should be obvious to anyone who reads this, whether they have participated in any way with ride sharing, or in fact if they’ve existed in the world and are at all aware of what smoking is.

Don’t smoke in my car. If you do you’ll be told to get out. I don’t have anything to safely handle the cigarette being extinguished, don’t have the desire to carry around a “fresh” cigarette butt in my car, and don’t want to be in any way responsible for littering by it being tossed out of my car. Don’t smoke in my car.

Now the basic concept – if not the reasons I mentioned above – should be reasonably obvious. However I have had someone try to light up a cigarette after I picked them up once. I figured I was safe from that this time because they’d just put out a cigarette before they got in when I picked them up. They sat in the back seat, and within a couple of minutes, I heard them put the window down – which seemed odd given that it was late on a cold night – and then a sound that I soon realised was them trying to get their lighter going. Looking in the rear-view mirror I saw them light up the cigarette in their mouth, and told them no. They argued that they had the window down, but I told them that wasn’t good enough, so they looked around for a moment and then threw the lit cigarette out the window.

I should’ve kicked them out. I was relatively new to Ubering, hadn’t had any incidents where I felt like the passenger had done something wrong, let alone thought about finishing the ride early and telling them to get out. I hadn’t even had an incident where afterwards I thought that maybe I should’ve kicked them out at the time. Until this ride at least. I let them stay, and fumed through the rest of the trip at the audacity of them to light up in the first place, and then the self-entitlement to complain about not being able to smoke when they were paying for the car ride, and how other riders let them smoke. Looking back on it the next morning, I resolved to not let that happen again, and that I would take a hard line with smokers in the future. It also meant that when much later I put signs up in the car relating to my Ubering, the first thing I knew to put on the sign was “No Smoking”.

A visual representation of what the car smells like when you get in just after having a smoke.

But smoking in an Uber isn’t the only way for a smoker to annoy, frustrate or anger an Uber driver. Though so far I’ve only had one person try to smoke in the car – and no one else ask for permission and be denied – I’ve had plenty of people who have been standing on the kerb or footpath, and when they’ve spotted me coming down the street or when I’ve pulled up in front of them, they’ve dropped the cigarette they’d been smoking to the ground, usually put it out with their foot, then get in the car. Just like them spotting me triggers them to get rid of the cigarette, seeing them get rid of it gets me cringingat the thought of them getting in the car. Not only that, but its the only thing so far that has meant passengers have lost a star from their rating from me before they get in the car.

Though this shouldn’t surprise smokers, the smell stays with you and gets into the car next to you as though you were bringing a friend. It also shouldn’t surprise smokers that sometimes that “friend” sticks around in the car long after you’ve gotten out. Not only do I have to put up with the smell, but if it does stick around and can’t be overcome by putting the windows down to air out the car and turning the air freshener up to max to try and deal with it, then the next passenger also has to deal with the smell. I know if I got into an Uber that smelled of cigarette smoke, I’d make sure I rated the driver, and it wouldn’t be a “5”.

So if you get into my car smelling of cigarettes – or any other foul smell for that matter – assuming I’m not being instantly choked out and so cancel the ride on you, you’re guaranteed to get no higher than a 4-star rating. I know plenty of other drivers feel the same way too. Whereas you get the choice to rate the driver or not, drivers have to rate passengers at the end of every trip, and a smell hanging around helps to remind us to rate lower. Unless its bad enough to cancel the ride before it starts, you’re rating is going to drop if you stink of smoke.

Simple tip… Don’t smoke in the car, or just before you get in the car: you stink!

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Published by Adam Faber

I've been an Uber driver in Sydney since early 2016, and puttering around on the web as my blogging alter-ego since mid 2017. Uber-Man is my second attempt at blogging, after a short-lived effort five years before about a previous job, all around parking. (Exciting, I know!) If the blogging wasn't a give away, I'm a nerd that loves sci-fi, table top gaming, and baseball.
View all posts by Adam Faber